Upcoming Show 02.24.06

HAPTIC -> Steven Hess, Joseph Mills, Adam Sonderberg + Nick Butcher
+
A TRIO -> Jim Baker, John Berndt, Carol Genetti
+
8mm films and loops by Nick Butcher

Priday, February 24
Doors 8:30 PM
Music 9PM
$5 Donation

HAPTIC is a chicago-based trio consisting of Steven R. Hess, Joseph C. Mills, and Adam J. Sonderberg.
The idea for the group was birthed out of the work Sonderberg (Civil War) and Hess (Pan American) contributed to the Dropp Ensemble. Both were interested in forming a group that could translate compositional ideas into sound in real time (read: live performance).
This might not sound like that big of a deal but the working method of the Dropp Ensemble (read: extensive post production) rendered that idea next to impossible.
To date haptic has played a small number of well attended concerts in the chicago area. Each performance has featured a different fourth member (Tony Buck [The Necks]; Deanna Varagona [Lambchop]; Tim Daisy [Vandermark 5]; Alex Barnett [The William Young]; Jon Mueller [Collections of Colonies of Bees]). This is a person the trio decides could add something unique to the sound, and that is the very thing that makes describing the group’s sonic properties such a challenge. One thing that is consistent are dense textures; whether assembled from clusters of staccato bursts or layers of hums and motor noise.
Haptic at one time or another can sound like a violent low-grade Supersilent or a meditative yet persistent late period Morton Feldman composition.

Leonardson Zerang Duo in the Reader

from the Chicago Reader:

ERIC LEONARDSON & MICHAEL ZERANG Local musicians Eric Leonardson and Michael Zerang don't play together very often, so their ongoing dialogue of acoustic and electric sounds has stayed fresh. Zerang, a percussionist, combines restless activity with a nuanced command of abrasive textures; tonight he'll restrict himself to a single snare drum played with homemade friction mallets, which he scrapes across the drumhead. Leonardson uses a device he designed called a "springboard"--a wooden board mounted on a walker and fitted with a contact microphone, which amplifies the vibrations of the metal springs, wooden slats, and rubber bands that he attaches to the board and plays with bows, brushes, and his fingertips. It's a marvelously flexible instrument, sonically and otherwise. Both men have written music for theater productions, which may account for the highly developed sense of drama they create when they improvise together. The Soliday-Baker Trio with Brent Gutzeit opens. --Bill Meyer

(A) r4WB1t5 micro.Fest

2006.01.21
FREE + OPEN
DOORS @ 8:00 PM
VIDEO STREAMS @ 8:30 PM
SHARED PLAYLISTS @ 9:00 PM
APPROACHING RANDOMNESS + SUBJECT TO SEARCH are always ON

/ * SHARED PLAYLISTS, APPROACHING RANDOMNESS, VIDEO STREAMS ++ SUBJECT TO SEARCH */

on JAN 21 aka 2006.01.21 Chicago's new ENEMY gallery will host (A) r4WB1t5 micro.Fest. this instance of (A) r4WB1t5 micro.Fest focuses on shared playlists, reiterations, projects approaching randomness, video streams, searches, databases + complex overlapping digital, analog + humanistic systems.

/ * SHARED PLAYLISTS */

the following 4 collaborative groups will perform a shared playlist of 7 short realtime audio video pieces reconceived as covers from a mutually determined shared playlist:

Mark Solotroff ++ Mike Nourse
http://bloodlust.blogspot.com
http://www.chicagoartdepartment.org

Insect Deli ++ Madame Chao
http://www.insectdeli.com
http://www.madamechao.com

Wetcat ++ Taeyoon Kim
http://www.wetcat.org

fAULTY mAJICK (The Faultless ++ Majick Missle)
http://www.thefaultless.info
http://magicmissile.us

this shared playlist will be performed in a round. all artists [+/or] collaborative groups will play the complete set as this searchable database repeats + reiterates in each unique variation created in this realtime human feedback system. this shared playlist includes covers of the following 7 songs in the following order:

00. "Night Shift" - Siouxsie and the Banshees
01. "Chopsticks" - Traditional
02. "I Am The Sun" - Swans
03. "Janitor" - Suburban Lawns
04. "White Rabbit" - Jefferson Airplane
05. "A Human Certainty" - Saccharine Trust
06. "WAT" - Laibach

intentional + coincidental connections, overlaps + exchanges will flow through out the space during this event.

/ * APPROACHING RANDOMNESS */

Random Screen by Aram Bartholl:
http://www.datenform.de/rscreeneng.html

Aram Bartholl's Random Screen installation travels from the .DE to the .US for this 2006.01.21 r4WB1t5 micro.Fest, appearing for the first time in the .US! this physical installation piece is a nonelectric "mechanical thermo dynamic display" built fro modified components + arranged in an ever expanding modular arrangement of pixel units powered by tee candle lights. Random Screen approaches randomness while literalizing physical computing + playing w/the rhetorics of New Media art discourse.

/ * VIDEO STREAMS */

Flickr.mov by jonathan coulton:
http://www.jonathancoulton.com/video/Flickr.mov

Brett Levin:
http://blevin.org/cat

Alok Saldanha:
http://www.infinitecat.com/movies

the 2006.01.21 r4WB1t5 @ ENEMY will also feature screen based video works of artists who visualize online databases such as Flickr ++ The Infinite Cat Project. jonathan coulton's Flickr.mov pulls previously disconnected images from Flickr only to reimagine them as an unbroken narrative stream. Brett Levin + Alok Saldanha have both created their own journeys through the ever expanding universe that is The Infinite Cat Project. these 3 video streams visualize online databases not as reductionist graphical abstractions that aim for purity but rather as expansive remixes + hallucinatory reconstructions.

/ * SUBJECT TO SEARCH */

the web based new media aspect of this (A) r4WB1t5 micro.Fest features projects organized around the theme "SUBJECT TO SEARCH". SUBJECT TO SEARCH includes:
Waiting by Horit Herman Peled:
http://www.horit.com/machsomwatch.htm

Google Talk by Douwe Osinga:
http://douweosinga.com/projects/googletalk

foofoofoo by alku:
http://openserver.cccb.org/~foofoofoo/index.html

popautomate by Jean-Baptiste Bayle + Beatrice Rettig:
http://www.noweb.org/guest/popautomate

Flexicon by robb drinkwater:
http://www.splintergroup.com/rdrink/dislexicon/generators/flexicon

+ thistext by jake elliott:
http://www.livejournal.com/users/thistext

all of these web based new media projects approach searching, databasing + outputting results from searches + databases as artistic methods, readymades + raw materials. these projects variously approach the SUBJECT TO SEARCH from politicized, systematic, secretive + widely accessible positions.

additionally, various freeware + artware project exchanges will be facilitated in the physical space of ENEMY @ this r4WB1t5 micro.Fest.

/* ABOUT */

this (A) r4WB1t5 micro.Fest is organized by jonCates, jon.satrom + Jason Soliday. Jason Soliday (director of ENEMY gallery) joins jon.satrom + jonCates (previous r4WB1t5 organizers) in developing this most recent instantiation of the open + copyable (A) r4WB1t5 micro.Fest format.

(A) r4WB1t5 micro.Fest is a new platform or framework for (A)narchistic forms of decentralized mini or micro festivals to self-organize around themes + theorypractices of raw bits of digital art + dirty new media. (A) r4WB1t5 micro.Fest is itself a decentralized + open platform for playing realtime systems + exchanging New Media projects in conversational contexts. (A) r4WB1t5 micro.Fest extends out of + feeds back into DaDaist, Situationist, Fluxist, punk, digital art + New Media theorypractices, hystories, posibilities + positionalities. (A) r4WB1t5 micro.Fest is an [open project/conceptual {platform|framework}] available to anyOne interested in self-organized DIY digital arts + dirty new media.

http://r4wb1t5.org/2006.01.21

Upcoming Show 03.27.06

Jason Soliday
Vertonen
Is


Monday, March 27
Doors 8:30 PM
Music 9PM
$5 Donation